Contra la cultura del dinero | Opinión | EL PAÍS No deja de hablarse del déficit, de la deuda, de las altas operaciones financieras, pero se evita hacerlo del sufrimiento de los que no tienen nada, de la pobreza creciente de jóvenes y ancianos, del envilecimiento del mundo
Gustavo Martín Garzo 19 MAY 2012 - 00:04 CET
MARCOS GUARDIOLA
“Dios mío, ¡qué saltos me haces dar!”, eso dijo la rana a su Creador. Según Chesterton, la pobre estaba tan maravillada con esa facultad de su cuerpo que no podía dejar de celebrar cada brinco que daba. Para el escritor inglés el que en los cuentos maravillosos haya manzanas de oro, ríos de miel, pájaros que hablan y árboles que cantan, solo es expresión del asombro que experimentan los niños al contemplar el mundo por primera vez. Su asombro ante la manzana que cuelga pletórica y olorosa de una rama, ante el arroyo que corre tembloroso a sus pies o ante el pájaro que inesperadamente se posa a su lado como si viniera a decirle algo. Ese mundo de oro y joyas preciosas, de príncipes y princesas, de objetos mágicos y bodas perfectas tiene que ver con el deseo de transfiguración que anida en el corazón humano. Navigare necesse est vivere non necess, solía decir de Isak Dinesen. No basta con vivir, queremos que nuestra vida tenga sentido, se transforme en algo valioso, en una historia que merezca la pena contar a los demás.
Lo maravilloso nos hace hablar. Tiene que ver con el principio erótico. Nos dice que no estamos solos, que la vida es una corriente inmensa que compartimos no solo con los otros individuos de nuestra especie, sino con los animales y los bosques, con las dunas de los desiertos y los cielos salpicados de estrellas. Nuestro mundo ha dado la espalda a lo maravilloso y solo el dinero parece tener en él poder para dar valor a las cosas. Estos días el Gobierno ha anunciado una amnistía a los defraudadores. Por ella, no solo se les va a permitir sacar a la luz el dinero que ocultan, sino que se les premiará permitiendo que paguen por él un porcentaje muy inferior al que les corresponde. Es una medida excepcional, nos dicen, ya que el Estado necesita dinero. No importa saber de dónde viene el dinero, ni por qué lo han tenido escondido, todos se comportan como si este tuviera el poder de bendecir a los que lo tienen liberándoles de la culpa y la responsabilidad. Y no son solo algunos políticos y tecnócratas los que piensan así. La sociedad entera vive entregada al gran dios del dinero. Pueblos perdidos compiten entre ellos porque se ponga en sus verdes prados cementerios nucleares, los hortelanos venden sus tierras para construir bloques de viviendas que arruinarán la belleza de la costa, o comunidades como Madrid y Cataluña compiten por acoger en su territorio un emporio de casinos, privilegios fiscales, prostitución y profunda vulgaridad, y todo ello para conseguir que el dinero fluya a sus cuentas bancarias. No deja de hablarse del déficit, de la deuda, de las altas operaciones financieras, pero se evita hacerlo del sufrimiento de los que no tienen nada, de la pobreza creciente de jóvenes y ancianos, del envilecimiento del mundo. Tampoco se habla de la pérdida de esa capacidad de los hombres antiguos de transformar en relatos los mínimos acontecimientos de sus vidas. Es la maldición del dinero, que petrifica cuanto toca, como bien se explica en la historia del rey Midas. El relato abre el mundo, el dinero lo cosifica. Y lo maravilloso es vivir en un mundo sin cosas.
Los viejos relatos no nos alejan del mundo, lo vuelven habitable y común, lo llenan de sentido
Cuando en El festín de Babette las señoras descubren que esta se ha gastado todo el dinero que ha ganado en la lotería en prepararles aquella cena inolvidable y la preguntan qué va a hacer ahora que vuelve a ser pobre, Babette les contesta orgullosa: “Una artista nunca es pobre”. Y es cierto: tiene el poder que le concede su imaginación. Deberían ponerse en los colegios e institutos las películas de John Ford, deberían verlas sobre todo nuestros políticos de derechas y nuestros banqueros. Es raro que en una película del director americano no haya un baile. La cultura del dinero, por boca de Margaret Thatcher, afirma que solo hay individuos y que la sociedad no existe. Pero en los bailes de John Ford late siempre la idea de una comunidad, y de que aquello que le pasa a uno solo de sus miembros afecta a todos los que forman parte de ella. John Ford pertenece a lo que Eugenio D’Ors llamó la familia de los genios claros, la familia de Homero y los grandes pintores renacentistas, de esos “seres dichosos que van de la sombra a la luz sin esfuerzo, que tienen el don de la luz”. En una escena de Corazones indomables la protagonista ve a su esposo, contemplando a su hijo dormido, y conmovida por el regalo de este momento de paz en un mundo lleno de traiciones y muertes, se sienta en las escaleras y exclama: “¡Dios mío, haz que todo permanezca así para siempre!”. Lo maravilloso nos enseña a ver lo más cercano con los ojos de la gratitud y el asombro, los ojos del que ve la belleza del mundo y quiere cuidarla. En La pata de la raposa, de Pérez de Ayala, puede leerse: “Me habló usted siempre de las cosas extraordinarias con tanta naturalidad, que yo me veía obligado a aceptarlas como cosas naturales, y de las cosas naturales con tanta intensidad, que yo descubría en ellas nuevos sentidos”.
Hemos dado la espalda a lo maravilloso y sólo el dinero parece tener el poder para dar valor a las cosas
John Keats decía que el poeta debía estar con los pies en el jardín y con los dedos tocando el cielo. Los antiguos relatos cumplían esa función, eran un puente entre lo divino y lo humano, entre el mundo de sueño y el mundo real. Lo maravilloso es abandonar el mundo de los dogmas y habitar el tiempo del relato, que es el tiempo de la contradicción y la libertad. Y no podemos vivir sin relatos, aunque los hayamos olvidado. Viven a través de nosotros, son el humus del que nos alimentarnos, la savia que protege nuestros pensamientos. La historia más realista de nuestros días encierra ecos de esas historias eternas. Todos los que en estos días han sufrido ante la fotografía del safari africano de Juan Carlos, han vuelto a contar en el mundo la historia del arca de Noé, salvador de los elefantes. Una pareja de enamorados entona cada noche el Cantar de los cantares, aunque nunca lo hayan leído. Una niña pequeña que imita a su madre, es como la ninfa Eco cuando loca de amor repetía por el bosque las palabras de Narciso. Los relatos de Las mil y una noches no hablan de un mundo ajeno al que conocemos, sino de esas otras vidas que hay en cada uno de nosotros. Miles de niños nacen en el mundo cada día, y miles de mujeres se enfrentan a esa experiencia única que es tener un hijo, y sin embargo apenas se las presta atención. La historia de María y el ángel nos permite interrogar ese instante, preguntarnos qué sucede de verdad en él. En cierta forma, cualquier mujer, al tener el niño que desea, vuelve a contar en el mundo la historia de María y su hijo y en su silencio cuando le contempla dormido en sus brazos está su gozo por el milagro de su nacimiento y su temor a todo lo malo que pueda sucederle.
Los viejos relatos no nos alejan del mundo, lo vuelven habitable y común, lo llenan de sentido. En sus reportajes sobre el juicio al juez Baltasar Garzón, por los crímenes del franquismo, la periodista Natalia Junquera nos contó en este mismo periódico la historia de una pobre niña a la que llamaban “la hija del hojalatero que tiraron a los pozos”, y que con 90 años aún seguía recordando a su madre y a otras mujeres del pueblo llevando a escondidas flores a los pozos porque no sabían dónde estaban los cuerpos de sus maridos e hijos asesinados. Lo maravilloso es empeñarse en seguir llevando flores a los pozos aunque la razón nos diga que no sirve de nada.
Gustavo Martín Garzo es escritor.
un proyecto donde lo efimero es el soporte sabiendo que la muerte odia la eternidad del instante.
martes, mayo 29, 2012
“No necesitamos a Marx para pensar este mundo”
“No necesitamos a Marx para pensar este mundo” | Galicia | EL PAÍS
“No necesitamos a Marx para pensar este mundo”
Ignacio El filósofo Ignacio Castro indaga en su nueva obra sobre un “comunismo posible”
Óscar Iglesias Santiago de Compostela 21 MAY 2012 - 18:57 CET8
Comunismo es predisposición a lo común, antes que nada, y un comunismo basal en el que nos movemos podría ser “esta empanada mental compartida ante lo que está pasando”. La desmitificación es de Javier Turnes, organizador de los Encontros de Filosofía da Costa da Morte. Él y la poeta Branca Novo presentaron en Santiago, la semana pasada, Sociedad y barbarie (Melusina), el nuevo libro —el undécimo en solitario— del filófoso santiagués Ignacio Castro. Si en el prólogo de la obra el profesor catalán Miguel Morey cita a Michel Foucault —para refutar la idea atribuida a Marx de que “la existencia concreta del hombre es el trabajo”— Castro invoca al mismo filósofo francés para defender la necesidad de una “espiritualidad política”.
“Sociedad y barbarie fustiga la reducción de la libertad individual en las democracias occidentales en nombre de una economía que conserva el prestigio de lo neutral porque gobierna nuestra neutralización, una silenciosa expropiación de la épica de vivir”, resume. Pero, por paradójico que pueda resultar en apariencia, ese cuestionamiento se asienta en una refutación de Marx, de las sombras mecanicistas que puntean su pensamiento. “La crítica radical de la economía que hace Marx sigue teniendo la forma de la economía política, con lo que una nueva cadena de fetichismos se consagra hasta el fin de la historia”, afirma el filósofo gallego, cuya obra se distingue por un ataque sin contemplaciones a la contemporaneidad occidental.
Castro niega que la suya sea otra crítica elitista más a la sacralización de la Historia o la proletarización del espíritu en la obra marxiana, en la que el ensayista y crítico de arte advierte “el colmo del materialismo”: “Esta aversión profunda y poco violenta, en apariencia, al fondo abstracto o espiritual de cada ser humano, y a la que Marx dio una vuelta de tuerca: lo singular”. Castro escribe contra el fetichismo de la mercancía “llamada Sociedad”, que conecta y fragmenta a los individuos aislándolos de su propia existencia, con el pensador alemán como “garante de fondo en la cobertura cultural del pragmatismo económico”. Contra “la religión histórica del progreso que Marx ha contribuido a consagrar, que explica muchas barbaridades del presente al ser asumida por el capitalismo”. Y contra el individualismo burgués a secas, según tuvo que precisar el autor en el turno de preguntas durante la presentación del libro en Santiago. “¿Qué nos quedaría sin Marx para el cabreo colectivo?”, le inquirieron. Un periodista llegó a trazar una analogía entre el texto de Castro y la célebre sentencia neocon de Margaret Thatcher: “La sociedad no existe, solo existen los individuos”. Pero Castro negó su adhesión a un individualismo adánico o posliberal: “Yo hablo de un comunismo posible”.
Un comunismo abigarrado y en constante mutación. Que se puede alimentar de la singularidad y la diferencia sin colocar la plusvalía económica sobre el resto de plusvalías de la existencia, cuyo fondo atrasado sigue siendo la muerte. En la línea de sutura sobre la que trabaja el autor, desde una “esquina de la Ilustración”, se puede citar a Max Stirner —sustrato de Nietzsche y uno de los protagonistas omitidos por Marx en La ideología alemana, por consejo de Engels— y a pensadores más actuales como Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben —que también analizó la economía como teología— o los filósofos del colectivo francés Tiqqun y su “insurrección que viene”.
El autor de Votos de riqueza defiende la antropología de Kant, el filósofo que normalizó la autonomía moral del ser humano (y la de la belleza). Más optimista y “más comunista”, dice, que la de Marx: “La concepción que Marx tiene del hombre, extirpado de todo lo que no sean reflejos económicos y contextuales, cristalizó el prejuicio burgués y ayudó a darle cultura y espíritu al capitalismo, poniendo en pie una antropología bárbara”. Ese triunfo de Marx en el Este y en el Oeste, afirma, podría servir para explicar la “derrota de la izquierda marxista, en buena medida por integración cultural”.
El filósofo santiagués escribe sobre el “cierto malestar” que podría inducir el abandono por su parte de algunos marcadores filosóficos habituales en las últimas décadas: “En un tiempo me pude definir como marxista posnietzscheano, ahora pienso que Marx ni siquiera cabe en el vientre de Nietzsche”. “Ningún pensador gozó como Marx de un cheque en blanco como el que él ha tenido… No lo necesitamos, ni para las luchas en curso ni para pensar este mundo”.
En el epílogo de Sociedad y barbarie se sintetiza el problema central en la obra de Castro: el de la confrontación de cada uno con lo que él denomina el tercer mundo de su existencia. “El odio a ese tercer mundo interior al hombre, ese fondo de alma que no se puede desarrollar, explica el racismo indisimulable que mantenemos contra las otras culturas, sistemáticamente injuriadas como atrasadas o tiránicas”. Y también, dice, “el oscurantismo del presente, esta movilización total por miedo a parar”. Castro asume que uno de los signos de esta época es la velocidad sin objetivo, una aceleración incesante que sepulta la vida. Y también en ese aspecto atribuye culpas al autor de El capital. “Tiene que ver con ese hombre apuntalado por Marx: sin suelo interno en el que pararse, ningún espacio de contemplación, degradado sistemáticamente como burgués”.
Las formas de socialización ajenas a la barbarie, en cualquier caso, ya están aquí. “¿No es hora de pasar a otra cosa, a un modo de espiritualidad compatible con esa pasión por la superficie propia de estos tiempos?”.
“Sociedad y barbarie fustiga la reducción de la libertad individual en las democracias occidentales en nombre de una economía que conserva el prestigio de lo neutral porque gobierna nuestra neutralización, una silenciosa expropiación de la épica de vivir”, resume. Pero, por paradójico que pueda resultar en apariencia, ese cuestionamiento se asienta en una refutación de Marx, de las sombras mecanicistas que puntean su pensamiento. “La crítica radical de la economía que hace Marx sigue teniendo la forma de la economía política, con lo que una nueva cadena de fetichismos se consagra hasta el fin de la historia”, afirma el filósofo gallego, cuya obra se distingue por un ataque sin contemplaciones a la contemporaneidad occidental.
Castro niega que la suya sea otra crítica elitista más a la sacralización de la Historia o la proletarización del espíritu en la obra marxiana, en la que el ensayista y crítico de arte advierte “el colmo del materialismo”: “Esta aversión profunda y poco violenta, en apariencia, al fondo abstracto o espiritual de cada ser humano, y a la que Marx dio una vuelta de tuerca: lo singular”. Castro escribe contra el fetichismo de la mercancía “llamada Sociedad”, que conecta y fragmenta a los individuos aislándolos de su propia existencia, con el pensador alemán como “garante de fondo en la cobertura cultural del pragmatismo económico”. Contra “la religión histórica del progreso que Marx ha contribuido a consagrar, que explica muchas barbaridades del presente al ser asumida por el capitalismo”. Y contra el individualismo burgués a secas, según tuvo que precisar el autor en el turno de preguntas durante la presentación del libro en Santiago. “¿Qué nos quedaría sin Marx para el cabreo colectivo?”, le inquirieron. Un periodista llegó a trazar una analogía entre el texto de Castro y la célebre sentencia neocon de Margaret Thatcher: “La sociedad no existe, solo existen los individuos”. Pero Castro negó su adhesión a un individualismo adánico o posliberal: “Yo hablo de un comunismo posible”.
Un comunismo abigarrado y en constante mutación. Que se puede alimentar de la singularidad y la diferencia sin colocar la plusvalía económica sobre el resto de plusvalías de la existencia, cuyo fondo atrasado sigue siendo la muerte. En la línea de sutura sobre la que trabaja el autor, desde una “esquina de la Ilustración”, se puede citar a Max Stirner —sustrato de Nietzsche y uno de los protagonistas omitidos por Marx en La ideología alemana, por consejo de Engels— y a pensadores más actuales como Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben —que también analizó la economía como teología— o los filósofos del colectivo francés Tiqqun y su “insurrección que viene”.
El autor de Votos de riqueza defiende la antropología de Kant, el filósofo que normalizó la autonomía moral del ser humano (y la de la belleza). Más optimista y “más comunista”, dice, que la de Marx: “La concepción que Marx tiene del hombre, extirpado de todo lo que no sean reflejos económicos y contextuales, cristalizó el prejuicio burgués y ayudó a darle cultura y espíritu al capitalismo, poniendo en pie una antropología bárbara”. Ese triunfo de Marx en el Este y en el Oeste, afirma, podría servir para explicar la “derrota de la izquierda marxista, en buena medida por integración cultural”.
El filósofo santiagués escribe sobre el “cierto malestar” que podría inducir el abandono por su parte de algunos marcadores filosóficos habituales en las últimas décadas: “En un tiempo me pude definir como marxista posnietzscheano, ahora pienso que Marx ni siquiera cabe en el vientre de Nietzsche”. “Ningún pensador gozó como Marx de un cheque en blanco como el que él ha tenido… No lo necesitamos, ni para las luchas en curso ni para pensar este mundo”.
En el epílogo de Sociedad y barbarie se sintetiza el problema central en la obra de Castro: el de la confrontación de cada uno con lo que él denomina el tercer mundo de su existencia. “El odio a ese tercer mundo interior al hombre, ese fondo de alma que no se puede desarrollar, explica el racismo indisimulable que mantenemos contra las otras culturas, sistemáticamente injuriadas como atrasadas o tiránicas”. Y también, dice, “el oscurantismo del presente, esta movilización total por miedo a parar”. Castro asume que uno de los signos de esta época es la velocidad sin objetivo, una aceleración incesante que sepulta la vida. Y también en ese aspecto atribuye culpas al autor de El capital. “Tiene que ver con ese hombre apuntalado por Marx: sin suelo interno en el que pararse, ningún espacio de contemplación, degradado sistemáticamente como burgués”.
Las formas de socialización ajenas a la barbarie, en cualquier caso, ya están aquí. “¿No es hora de pasar a otra cosa, a un modo de espiritualidad compatible con esa pasión por la superficie propia de estos tiempos?”.
martes, mayo 22, 2012
U B U W E B - Film & Video: "American Masters" John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It
U B U W E B - Film & Video: "American Masters" John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It
John Cage (1912-1992)
"American Masters" John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It (1990)
Vivian Perlis (writer)
TV Series: "American Masters" (1983)
Original Air Date: 17 September 1990
Country: UK
55 min
John Cage On His Way With Sound
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
New York Times
Published: September 17, 1990
Perhaps the most striking thing about John Cage is his ability to reduce just about anyone in his vicinity to a gentle smile. For more than 50 years, the distinguished, influential and often provocative composer has been challenging audiences with his work and his ideas. All the while, his primary goal has been disarmingly simple. Mr. Cage is interested, as he puts it, in ''increasing one's enjoyment of life, to become more open.''
The man and his philosophy are delineated skillfully and with warm admiration in ''John Cage: I Have Nothing To Say And I'm Am Saying It,'' a film directed by Allan Miller of the Music Project for Television. Vivian Perlis is the writer. The hourlong documentary, being presented as part of the ''American Masters'' series, can be seen at 9 tonight on Channel 13.
Mr. Cage, who was born in Los Angeles in 1912, became a student of the composer Arnold Schoenberg. The pupil soon realized he had absolutely no feeling for harmony.
Schoenberg was not encouraging: ''You'll come to a wall. You won't be able to get through.''
Mr. Cage was unfazed. ''Well, I'll bang my head against that wall,'' he said.
He then went on to defy most of the standard notions concerning serious music. He experimented with theories of chance. For Mr. Cage, one sound, or noise, was as useful as another. Is the sound of a moving truck musical, he says, then adds with characteristic impishness, ''Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?''
Using a format that is less chronological than thematic, the documentary homes in on the most important aspects of Mr. Cage's career, most notably his longtime collaboration with the choreographer Merce Cunninham. The two men are seen working together and their are clips from several dances, demonstrating how the music and the choreography proceed independently of each other.
Mr. Cunningham says two things are actually happening, ''not necessarily connected or disconnected.'' Meanwhile, amplifying everything from the plucking of cactus to bird-calls for his scores, Mr. Cage says he finds all noises ''as useful to new music as the so-called musical tones, for the simple reason that they are sounds.''
Several of Mr. Cage's compositions are sampled in performance. One work, described as central, is performed nearly in full (for some reason there is a slight cut). This is the famous 1952 piece ''Four Minutes and 33 Seconds.''
That's precisely how long the pianist, in this instance David Tudor, sits at a piano reading the score but never playing a note, leaving the audience to listen to the room's ambient sounds.
During the program, Jack Rockwell, a music critic for The New York Times, says, ''What Cage is doing is letting the listener contemplate art as life.''
And that is the point of Mr. Cage's art and life. The writer Calvin Tomkins says the composer is really a missionary, eager for us to be artists and wake up to the world around us. The performance artist Laurie Anderson notes how he is always encouraging others ''to just see what's right in front of them.''
This consistently insightful film leaves Mr. Cage in a country setting looking for mushrooms under a bed of autumn leaves.
''Our intention,'' he says softly, ''is to affirm this life.'' Here's to gentle smiles all around.
UbuWeb Film | UbuWeb
John Cage (1912-1992)
"American Masters" John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It (1990)
Vivian Perlis (writer)
TV Series: "American Masters" (1983)
Original Air Date: 17 September 1990
Country: UK
55 min
John Cage On His Way With Sound
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
New York Times
Published: September 17, 1990
Perhaps the most striking thing about John Cage is his ability to reduce just about anyone in his vicinity to a gentle smile. For more than 50 years, the distinguished, influential and often provocative composer has been challenging audiences with his work and his ideas. All the while, his primary goal has been disarmingly simple. Mr. Cage is interested, as he puts it, in ''increasing one's enjoyment of life, to become more open.''
The man and his philosophy are delineated skillfully and with warm admiration in ''John Cage: I Have Nothing To Say And I'm Am Saying It,'' a film directed by Allan Miller of the Music Project for Television. Vivian Perlis is the writer. The hourlong documentary, being presented as part of the ''American Masters'' series, can be seen at 9 tonight on Channel 13.
Mr. Cage, who was born in Los Angeles in 1912, became a student of the composer Arnold Schoenberg. The pupil soon realized he had absolutely no feeling for harmony.
Schoenberg was not encouraging: ''You'll come to a wall. You won't be able to get through.''
Mr. Cage was unfazed. ''Well, I'll bang my head against that wall,'' he said.
He then went on to defy most of the standard notions concerning serious music. He experimented with theories of chance. For Mr. Cage, one sound, or noise, was as useful as another. Is the sound of a moving truck musical, he says, then adds with characteristic impishness, ''Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?''
Using a format that is less chronological than thematic, the documentary homes in on the most important aspects of Mr. Cage's career, most notably his longtime collaboration with the choreographer Merce Cunninham. The two men are seen working together and their are clips from several dances, demonstrating how the music and the choreography proceed independently of each other.
Mr. Cunningham says two things are actually happening, ''not necessarily connected or disconnected.'' Meanwhile, amplifying everything from the plucking of cactus to bird-calls for his scores, Mr. Cage says he finds all noises ''as useful to new music as the so-called musical tones, for the simple reason that they are sounds.''
Several of Mr. Cage's compositions are sampled in performance. One work, described as central, is performed nearly in full (for some reason there is a slight cut). This is the famous 1952 piece ''Four Minutes and 33 Seconds.''
That's precisely how long the pianist, in this instance David Tudor, sits at a piano reading the score but never playing a note, leaving the audience to listen to the room's ambient sounds.
During the program, Jack Rockwell, a music critic for The New York Times, says, ''What Cage is doing is letting the listener contemplate art as life.''
And that is the point of Mr. Cage's art and life. The writer Calvin Tomkins says the composer is really a missionary, eager for us to be artists and wake up to the world around us. The performance artist Laurie Anderson notes how he is always encouraging others ''to just see what's right in front of them.''
This consistently insightful film leaves Mr. Cage in a country setting looking for mushrooms under a bed of autumn leaves.
''Our intention,'' he says softly, ''is to affirm this life.'' Here's to gentle smiles all around.
UbuWeb Film | UbuWeb
“comunismo posible”
“¿No es hora de pasar a otra cosa, a un modo de espiritualidad compatible con esa pasión por la superficie propia de estos tiempos?”.
“No necesitamos a Marx para pensar este mundo”
Ignacio El filósofo Ignacio Castro indaga en su nueva obra sobre un “comunismo posible”
Óscar Iglesias
Santiago de Compostela
21 MAY 2012 -
Comunismo es predisposición a lo común, antes que nada, y un
comunismo basal en el que nos movemos podría ser “esta empanada mental
compartida ante lo que está pasando”. La desmitificación es de Javier
Turnes, organizador de los Encontros de Filosofía da Costa da Morte. Él y
la poeta Branca Novo presentaron en Santiago, la semana pasada, Sociedad y barbarie
(Melusina), el nuevo libro —el undécimo en solitario— del filófoso
santiagués Ignacio Castro. Si en el prólogo de la obra el profesor
catalán Miguel Morey cita a Michel Foucault —para refutar la idea
atribuida a Marx de que “la existencia concreta del hombre es el
trabajo”— Castro invoca al mismo filósofo francés para defender la
necesidad de una “espiritualidad política”.
“Sociedad y barbarie fustiga la reducción de la libertad individual en las democracias occidentales en nombre de una economía que conserva el prestigio de lo neutral porque gobierna nuestra neutralización, una silenciosa expropiación de la épica de vivir”, resume. Pero, por paradójico que pueda resultar en apariencia, ese cuestionamiento se asienta en una refutación de Marx, de las sombras mecanicistas que puntean su pensamiento. “La crítica radical de la economía que hace Marx sigue teniendo la forma de la economía política, con lo que una nueva cadena de fetichismos se consagra hasta el fin de la historia”, afirma el filósofo gallego, cuya obra se distingue por un ataque sin contemplaciones a la contemporaneidad occidental.
Castro niega que la suya sea otra crítica elitista más a la sacralización de la Historia o la proletarización del espíritu en la obra marxiana, en la que el ensayista y crítico de arte advierte “el colmo del materialismo”: “Esta aversión profunda y poco violenta, en apariencia, al fondo abstracto o espiritual de cada ser humano, y a la que Marx dio una vuelta de tuerca: lo singular”. Castro escribe contra el fetichismo de la mercancía “llamada Sociedad”, que conecta y fragmenta a los individuos aislándolos de su propia existencia, con el pensador alemán como “garante de fondo en la cobertura cultural del pragmatismo económico”. Contra “la religión histórica del progreso que Marx ha contribuido a consagrar, que explica muchas barbaridades del presente al ser asumida por el capitalismo”. Y contra el individualismo burgués a secas, según tuvo que precisar el autor en el turno de preguntas durante la presentación del libro en Santiago. “¿Qué nos quedaría sin Marx para el cabreo colectivo?”, le inquirieron. Un periodista llegó a trazar una analogía entre el texto de Castro y la célebre sentencia neocon de Margaret Thatcher: “La sociedad no existe, solo existen los individuos”. Pero Castro negó su adhesión a un individualismo adánico o posliberal: “Yo hablo de un comunismo posible”.
Un comunismo abigarrado y en constante mutación. Que se puede alimentar de la singularidad y la diferencia sin colocar la plusvalía económica sobre el resto de plusvalías de la existencia, cuyo fondo atrasado sigue siendo la muerte. En la línea de sutura sobre la que trabaja el autor, desde una “esquina de la Ilustración”, se puede citar a Max Stirner —sustrato de Nietzsche y uno de los protagonistas omitidos por Marx en La ideología alemana, por consejo de Engels— y a pensadores más actuales como Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben —que también analizó la economía como teología— o los filósofos del colectivo francés Tiqqun y su “insurrección que viene”.
El autor de Votos de riqueza defiende la antropología de Kant, el filósofo que normalizó la autonomía moral del ser humano (y la de la belleza). Más optimista y “más comunista”, dice, que la de Marx: “La concepción que Marx tiene del hombre, extirpado de todo lo que no sean reflejos económicos y contextuales, cristalizó el prejuicio burgués y ayudó a darle cultura y espíritu al capitalismo, poniendo en pie una antropología bárbara”. Ese triunfo de Marx en el Este y en el Oeste, afirma, podría servir para explicar la “derrota de la izquierda marxista, en buena medida por integración cultural”.
El filósofo santiagués escribe sobre el “cierto malestar” que podría inducir el abandono por su parte de algunos marcadores filosóficos habituales en las últimas décadas: “En un tiempo me pude definir como marxista posnietzscheano, ahora pienso que Marx ni siquiera cabe en el vientre de Nietzsche”. “Ningún pensador gozó como Marx de un cheque en blanco como el que él ha tenido… No lo necesitamos, ni para las luchas en curso ni para pensar este mundo”.
En el epílogo de Sociedad y barbarie se sintetiza el problema central en la obra de Castro: el de la confrontación de cada uno con lo que él denomina el tercer mundo de su existencia. “El odio a ese tercer mundo interior al hombre, ese fondo de alma que no se puede desarrollar, explica el racismo indisimulable que mantenemos contra las otras culturas, sistemáticamente injuriadas como atrasadas o tiránicas”. Y también, dice, “el oscurantismo del presente, esta movilización total por miedo a parar”. Castro asume que uno de los signos de esta época es la velocidad sin objetivo, una aceleración incesante que sepulta la vida. Y también en ese aspecto atribuye culpas al autor de El capital. “Tiene que ver con ese hombre apuntalado por Marx: sin suelo interno en el que pararse, ningún espacio de contemplación, degradado sistemáticamente como burgués”.
Las formas de socialización ajenas a la barbarie, en cualquier caso, ya están aquí. “¿No es hora de pasar a otra cosa, a un modo de espiritualidad compatible con esa pasión por la superficie propia de estos tiempos?”.
“Sociedad y barbarie fustiga la reducción de la libertad individual en las democracias occidentales en nombre de una economía que conserva el prestigio de lo neutral porque gobierna nuestra neutralización, una silenciosa expropiación de la épica de vivir”, resume. Pero, por paradójico que pueda resultar en apariencia, ese cuestionamiento se asienta en una refutación de Marx, de las sombras mecanicistas que puntean su pensamiento. “La crítica radical de la economía que hace Marx sigue teniendo la forma de la economía política, con lo que una nueva cadena de fetichismos se consagra hasta el fin de la historia”, afirma el filósofo gallego, cuya obra se distingue por un ataque sin contemplaciones a la contemporaneidad occidental.
Castro niega que la suya sea otra crítica elitista más a la sacralización de la Historia o la proletarización del espíritu en la obra marxiana, en la que el ensayista y crítico de arte advierte “el colmo del materialismo”: “Esta aversión profunda y poco violenta, en apariencia, al fondo abstracto o espiritual de cada ser humano, y a la que Marx dio una vuelta de tuerca: lo singular”. Castro escribe contra el fetichismo de la mercancía “llamada Sociedad”, que conecta y fragmenta a los individuos aislándolos de su propia existencia, con el pensador alemán como “garante de fondo en la cobertura cultural del pragmatismo económico”. Contra “la religión histórica del progreso que Marx ha contribuido a consagrar, que explica muchas barbaridades del presente al ser asumida por el capitalismo”. Y contra el individualismo burgués a secas, según tuvo que precisar el autor en el turno de preguntas durante la presentación del libro en Santiago. “¿Qué nos quedaría sin Marx para el cabreo colectivo?”, le inquirieron. Un periodista llegó a trazar una analogía entre el texto de Castro y la célebre sentencia neocon de Margaret Thatcher: “La sociedad no existe, solo existen los individuos”. Pero Castro negó su adhesión a un individualismo adánico o posliberal: “Yo hablo de un comunismo posible”.
Un comunismo abigarrado y en constante mutación. Que se puede alimentar de la singularidad y la diferencia sin colocar la plusvalía económica sobre el resto de plusvalías de la existencia, cuyo fondo atrasado sigue siendo la muerte. En la línea de sutura sobre la que trabaja el autor, desde una “esquina de la Ilustración”, se puede citar a Max Stirner —sustrato de Nietzsche y uno de los protagonistas omitidos por Marx en La ideología alemana, por consejo de Engels— y a pensadores más actuales como Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben —que también analizó la economía como teología— o los filósofos del colectivo francés Tiqqun y su “insurrección que viene”.
El autor de Votos de riqueza defiende la antropología de Kant, el filósofo que normalizó la autonomía moral del ser humano (y la de la belleza). Más optimista y “más comunista”, dice, que la de Marx: “La concepción que Marx tiene del hombre, extirpado de todo lo que no sean reflejos económicos y contextuales, cristalizó el prejuicio burgués y ayudó a darle cultura y espíritu al capitalismo, poniendo en pie una antropología bárbara”. Ese triunfo de Marx en el Este y en el Oeste, afirma, podría servir para explicar la “derrota de la izquierda marxista, en buena medida por integración cultural”.
El filósofo santiagués escribe sobre el “cierto malestar” que podría inducir el abandono por su parte de algunos marcadores filosóficos habituales en las últimas décadas: “En un tiempo me pude definir como marxista posnietzscheano, ahora pienso que Marx ni siquiera cabe en el vientre de Nietzsche”. “Ningún pensador gozó como Marx de un cheque en blanco como el que él ha tenido… No lo necesitamos, ni para las luchas en curso ni para pensar este mundo”.
En el epílogo de Sociedad y barbarie se sintetiza el problema central en la obra de Castro: el de la confrontación de cada uno con lo que él denomina el tercer mundo de su existencia. “El odio a ese tercer mundo interior al hombre, ese fondo de alma que no se puede desarrollar, explica el racismo indisimulable que mantenemos contra las otras culturas, sistemáticamente injuriadas como atrasadas o tiránicas”. Y también, dice, “el oscurantismo del presente, esta movilización total por miedo a parar”. Castro asume que uno de los signos de esta época es la velocidad sin objetivo, una aceleración incesante que sepulta la vida. Y también en ese aspecto atribuye culpas al autor de El capital. “Tiene que ver con ese hombre apuntalado por Marx: sin suelo interno en el que pararse, ningún espacio de contemplación, degradado sistemáticamente como burgués”.
Las formas de socialización ajenas a la barbarie, en cualquier caso, ya están aquí. “¿No es hora de pasar a otra cosa, a un modo de espiritualidad compatible con esa pasión por la superficie propia de estos tiempos?”.
UbuWeb
UbuWeb
Stewart Home - Short Films of the Eighties & Nineties
Ten rarely seen films by the British artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist, which combine pulp novel sensibilities with pornography, political agit-prop, and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art. These vintage shaky Super-8 and VHS works include promotions for Home's books, advertisements shown at independent cinemas, Situationist film remakes and much more. Also included are two recent works, Screams In Favour Of De Sade (2002) and The Eclipse & Re-Emergence of the Oedipus Complex (2004). UbuWeb also hosts an extensive Stewart Home audio archive [MP3].
Charles Bukowski Audio Archive (1968-86) A slew of orphaned and bootlegged recordings, inlcuding at-home performances, readings, radio shows & interviews. Included here are At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968), 70 Minutes in Hell (1969), King of Poets (1970), Poems and Insults (1973), Hostage (1980), Do You Use a Notebook? (1986) and Bukowski Lives! (undated). [MP3]
Bertolt Brecht's Audio Works A sweep of recordings and interpretations of Brecht's plays and speeches, both historical and contemporary. Includes Brecht singing two songs from "Die Dreigroschenoper" (rec. 1928/29), his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947), plays by the legendary Berliner Ensemble from the mid-50s, as well as archival radio plays of Brecht's work including "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," "Mr Puntila & His Man Matti," "In The Jungle of Cities," "The Life Of Galileo,"The Trial of Lucullus," "A Respectable Wedding," "Schweik in the Second World War," and "The Threepenny Opera." [MP3]
Reza Abdoh - Videos (1986-93) Reza Abdoh [1963-1995] was an Iranian-born director and playwright known for his large-scale, experimental theatrical productions that utilized multimedia elements and violent sexual imagery. Abdoh died of AIDS on May 11, 1995 in New York City at the age of 32. Included here are are eight videos: My Face (1986); Sleeping with the Devil (1990); The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice (1990); Bogeyman (1991); Daddy's Girl (1991); The Weeping Song (1991); The Law of Remains (1992); and Tight Right White (1993). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Bidoun Magazine.
Alfred Jarry Finally Appears on UbuWeb From our FAQ: Why is there no Alfred Jarry on UbuWeb? Answer: ;) It is our 'pataphysical joke. Sixteen years later, we've decided enough is enough. Hence, we've beefed up our Jarry audio archive [MP3s] with some archival Ubuesque cabaret chansons penned by Jarry and his pals, a French radio documentary on Jarry [Alfred Jarry: Introduction à la vie et l'ouvre du créateur d' Ubu Roi] and a lecture by Jarry scholar Michael Taylor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We've also posted the first of many film versions of Ubu Roi to come, this one directed by Jean-Christophe Averty in 1965, which is a rollicking mix of live acting and animation, all in glorious black and white. We do hope you'll forgive us.
Robert Hughes - Shock of the New (1982) A classic eight part documentary that offers a comprehensive view on the development of modernist art in its cultural context. It focusses minly on painting and sculpting but pays some attention to architecture as well. The documentary is presented and narrated by the art critic Robert Hughes, whose views on modernism have left an unmistakable stamp on the film. It was originally aired by the BBC.
Mike Kelley (1954-2012) Ubu mourns the loss of this great artist. You can find his audio archive here [MP3], his videos here, and an interivew with him here [PDF].
John Cage Centenary (2012) In preparation for the hundred-year anniversary of John Cage's birth, we've quietly been beefing up Cage's audio and films. In particular, we've just added a number of lectures, interviews, and Q&A's with Cage, recorded between 1969 and 1991. There are also several of papers written on John Cage in UbuWeb Papers, as well as a variety of works of his in UbuWeb's Historical section. In fact, there's so much John Cage on Ubu's site that we can't keep up with it.
Stanya Kahn "It's Cool, I'm Good" (2010) UbuWeb is pleased to present one of three films from Kahn's first body of solo video works, which continues Kahn's longstanding exploration of the blurred lines between fiction and document, performance and being, humor and distress, the scripted and the improvised. With a 22-track surround-sound audio score and over 20 locations featured, It's Cool, I'm Good creates a visceral cinematic space in which place and action, landscape and soundscape operate literally and metaphorically, signaling a tenuous relationship between experiences of trauma and moments of agency. Paralleling the ways in which jokes simultaneously compress and expand meaning, here living and and naming collapse into each other, in a narrative that unpacks more along psycho-emotional lines, creating many small arcs in place of one grand one. You can view the films of Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge here.
Ten Women Who Use Film A special project curated by Jennifer Higgie for UbuWeb featuring dozens of works by women filmmakers of varying ages and nationalities. Included are Juliette Blightman, Jennifer Bornstein, Bonnie Camplin, Spartacus Chetwynd, Beatrice Gibson, Aleksandra Mir, Frances Stark, Imogen Stidworthy, Annika Ström and Fiona Tan.
UbuWeb: Visual Poetry UbuWeb began in 1996 as a site for visual & concrete poetry and this new section expands upon and deepens Ubu's original vision. Beginning with Ian Hamilton Finlay's seminal magazine "Poor.Old.Tired.Horse" (1962-68) and continuing to the present (Anatol Knotek's 2010 "Rotated Alphabet"), the collection spans a half-century and encompasses hundreds of artists. This first installment, consisting of nearly 100 items will continue to be updated by curator & editor derek beaulieu.
Ryan Trecartin - Any Ever (2009-2010) Ryan Trecartin’s Any Ever comprises seven autonomous but interrelated videos. The work is structured as a diptych, with Trill-ogy Comp (three movies) as one side and Re’Search Wait’S (four movies) as the other. Taken together, these videos embark on poetic, formal, and structural elaborations of new forms of technology, language, narrative, identity, and humanity, portraying an extra-dimensional world that channels the existential dramas of our own. The individual videos fit together, block, break, orbit, or attract one another in infinite shifting combinations. Any Ever’s master narrative is subjectively chosen by the viewer, read from the shifting topography of its seven parts. Included is the Trill-ogy Comp, consisting of the three movies K-CoreaINC.K (section a); Sibling Topics (section a); and P.opular S.ky (section ish). Re’Search Wait’S comprises four movies: Ready, The Re’Search, Roamie View : History Enhancement, and Temp Stop.
Electronic Music Resources UbuWeb is pleased to announce the opening of a massive new section, devoted to technical resources concerning the practice of electronic and experimental sound. This is a place for information about actual methods and techniques, with little writing on aesthetics alone. It takes the form of technical/historical articles, interviews, books, small-press magazines and patents. Regrettably, most previous treatments of electronic music have tended to shy away from the details of the medium itself. In hopes of rendering the subject palatable they have removed much of its flavor, for it is precisely within the box, teeming with currents, where the true beauty resides - the other side of the panel. This first installment offers nearly 300 items, including books, periodicals, articles, interviews, media & patents.
The Films of Joseph Cornell (1936-1960) The films of the reclusive artist Joseph Cornell are as unique as his famous box constructions. Though rarely exhibited during his lifetime, these mysterious works nonetheless have had a deep and lasting influence on the world of avant-garde filmmaking . His entire body of film numbers some thirty-odd works, encompassing the incomplete and the fragmentary. It can be said that Cornell made two kinds of films in two distinct periods of activity: collage films, made by recombining found materials, and directed films,where he worked with cinematographers (including Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt and Larry Jordan) to document his fantasy/experience of wandering in New York. -Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta. Included here are 12 of Cornell's films.
History of Electronic / Electroacoustic Music [1937-2001] This massive selection is from a 62 CD set called "The History of Electroacoustic Music" that was floating around as a torrent, reputedly curated by a Brazilian student. It's sketchy. The torrent vanished and the collection has long been unavailable. It's a clearly flawed selection: there's few women and almost no one working outside of the Western tradition (where are the Japanese? Chinese? etc.). However, as an effort, it's admirable and contains a ton of great stuff. Take it with a grain of salt, or perhaps use it as a provocation to curate a more intelligent, inclusive, and comprehensive selection.
UbuWeb at 15 Years: An Overview Ubu's founder Kenneth Goldsmith writes: "It’s amazing to me that UbuWeb, after fifteen years, is still going. Run with no money and put together pretty much without permission, Ubu has succeeded by breaking all the rules, by going about things the wrong way. UbuWeb can be construed as the Robin Hood of the avant-garde, but instead of taking from one and giving to the other, we feel that in the end, we’re giving to all. UbuWeb is as much about the legal and social ramifications of its self-created distribution and archiving system as it is about the content hosted on the site. In a sense, the content takes care of itself; but keeping it up there has proved to be a trickier proposition." Read the entire piece at The Poetry Foundation.
The Films of Kamran Shirdel UbuWeb is pleased to present four of Shirdel's most renowned socio-political documentaries, films that courageously and frankly revealed the darker side of Iran's economic boom, analyzing the effects of a society of flush with oil money. These films were steeped in a deep social consciousness reminiscent of the best of the Italian Neo-realist tradition, the cinema that had influenced him deeply during his studies in Italy. Shirdel's furious documentaries and cinematic language were a bone of contention both under the Shah and following his exile, because they spoke up for the underprivileged and, in doing so, exposed and criticized the corruption of the mechanism of power. Because of the severe censorship, nearly all his films were banned and confiscated, and in the end he was expelled from The Ministry and put on the blacklist. Seven years after it was made (and censored), his The Epic of the Gorgani Village Boy (The Night It Rained!), after receiving the GRAN PRIX at The Third Tehran International Film Festival (1974), was immediately banned again and remained so (like his Nedamatgah (Women's Prison, 1965), Qaleh (Women's Quarter, 1966), Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966), and others) until after the revolution. Presented in collaboration with Bidoun: Art & Culture from the Middle East.
The Avant Garde Project Comes to UbuWeb UbuWeb is pleased to welcome the legendary Avant Garde Project. The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. The first installment is up, with new material as well as older, AGP archives to be added in the near future. [MP3 and FLAC]
Jean Cocteau - The Complete Recordings A set of historic recordings, compiled by Cocteau's sound producer Fred Kiriloff. Inlcudes Parade, Jean Cocteau's Theatre, Les Voleurs d'Enfants (The Abductors), La Toison d'Or (The Golden Fleece), La Machine Infernale (The Infernal Mechanism), La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), Presentation of the Group of Six, Le Bel Indifférent (The Callous Beau), Les Parents Terribles, Reception Speech at the Académie Française. Plus previously unissued items, such as: L'Arbre de No‘l (The Christmas Tree), Crucifixion, Nuit de No‘l (Christmas Night) and the Preface to Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower Wedding) and many others. Cocteau's collaborators included Francis Poulenc, Eric Satie, Marianne Oswald, Suzy Solidor, Edith Piaf, Jean Marais, Jeanne Moreau, Diaghilev, Picasso and more. [MP3]
The Films of Peggy Ahwesh (1985-2009) Over the last twenty years, Peggy Ahwesh has produced one of the most heterogeneous bodies of work in the field of experimental film and video. A true bricoleur, her tools include narrative and documentary styles, improvised performance and scripted dialogue, synch-sound film, found footage, digital animation, and crude Pixelvision video. Using this range of approaches, she has extended the project initiated by 1960s and '70s American avant-garde film, and has augmented that tradition with an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject. Presented here are: From Romance to Ritual (1985), The Deadman (1989), Martina's Playhouse (1989), Nocturne (1998), She Puppet (2001), The Third Body (2007), Beirut Outtakes (2007), Bethlehem (2009). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).
UbuWeb sur Radio France Culture Kenneth Goldsmith, fondateur d'UbuWeb, explique à Thomas Baumgartner la genèse et l'esprit d'UbuWeb, dans Les Passagers de la Nuit sur France Culture, famous French radio, le 25 mars 2011. Avec aussi les voix de Warhol, Beuys, Dali, Joyce, Kurt Schwitters... Téléchargeable ici [30 min/ French]
Vanguarda da pilhagem: roubo e arte no UbuWeb &
Kenneth Goldsmith, do UbuWeb: 'O site é muito ruim'
O Golbo, Brazil, 26.03.2011
IRIS-TIME UNLIMITED (1962-1970) An occasional ephemeral two-page newspaper produced by the legendary experimental Iris Clert Gallery in Paris, featuring many of the cutting-edge artists of the day including Ad Reinhardt, Pol Bury, Lucio Fontana, CPLY and many others. Clert ran an almost anarchistic free space in Saint Germain des Prés, which featured early conceptual shows (Yves Klein's empty gallery and Arman's rubbish-strewn space) as well as being an early venue for performance art. Curated for UbuWeb by Ulysse Geissler.
Harry Bertoia - The Sonambient Discography [MP3] In the early 1970's Harry Bertoia made hundreds of sound sculptures. These sculptures represent Harry Bertoia's formation of Sonambient. Sonambient was Bertoia's term to describe the spatial and tonal environment created by these sound sculptures. By stretching, bending, striking, and in other ways moving the materials, he made them respond to wind and/or to touch to create different sounds or tones, which he then taught himself to 'play' and recorded a series of pieces. He also performed with the pieces in a number of concerts. The completed Sonambient also consists of gongs and suspended sonic-bars. Within his renovated barn, Harry made more than 360 magnetic-tape recordings.
We Killed Our RSS Feed Sorry about that. But you can always catch the latest on our Twitter feed. Or check this page. We're always updating. Thx.
Ubu Moves To New Servers We're proud to announce our new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who is now hosting Ubu's media files. We're in the process of switching everything over to the new servers. While you'll (finally) begin to see new media content, there will be some bumps and many inevitable 404s. Bear with us: it might take a while to get it all figured out. If you find something that's not working, please let us know and we'll fix it.
James Hoff - Topten (2008) In almost every issue since December 1997, the contemporary art monthly Artforum has asked a member of the art world to compile a list of his or her top ten favorite recent exhibitions (as well as concerts, television programs, books, and events) in a list that displays the writer's taste as well as his or her wit. With this hefty artist's book, James Hoff has reprinted the text of every column alongside the abstract designs of blacked-out photographs that once depicted the writers' picks. Inlcudes Kate Bush, David Byrne, Dave Eggers, Dave Hickey, Charlie Kaufman, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Matmos, Glenn O'Brien, Amy Sillman, Laurie Simmons, John Waters and dozens more. Also related, is the archive of UbuWeb's monthly Top Ten picks.
Listening to Films, a New UbuWeb Podcast A selection of ten films from the UbuWeb archive that are actually worth listening to (as well as seeing). Included here are excerpts from the following films: Vito Acconci's Theme Song (1973); René Clair's Entr'acte (1924) with a soundtrack by Erik Satie; Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn's Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out (2006); Jordan Wolfson's Con Leche (2009); People Like Us's Story Without End (2005); Hermann Nitsch's 6 Tage Spiel - Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Day 3: Day of Dionysus (1998); Sun Ra A Joyful Noise (1980); Richard Serra's Boomerang (1974); David Van Tieghem's Ear to the Ground (1979); Karl Holmqvist's I'm With You In Rockland (2005). Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
"No money, no democracy - that's why UbuWeb is so good" An interview with UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith at Radio Web MACBA. Poet, university professor and amateur archivist, Kenneth Goldsmith is the founder and main editor of Ubuweb, the Internet's largest archive of artistic avant-garde material. An underground project that has no institutional backing or budget of any kind, Ubuweb is an influential repository that is as exhaustive as it is personal, reflecting the preferences, quirks and obsessions of its creator. Son[i]a talks to Kenneth Goldsmith about the origins, ideas and operation of Ubuweb.
Eight Flims by Alexander Kluge (1960-1977) Writer, theorist, filmmaker, and television pioneer, Alexander Kluge is one of the intellectual giants of post-war Germany. Although he directed nearly thirty films, Kluge's uncompromising politics and formal experimentation ensured that most of these critically celebrated works never reached a mass audience. Despite this groundbreaking work, it is his career as a fiction writer that has contributed most to his European renown. Kluge has treated media as a fluid field, one in which disciplinary boundaries are as questionable as the distinctions between high and low, individual and society, history and the present: all are texts up for renegotiation. Films inlcuded here are: Lehrer im Wandel (Teachers in Transformation) (1963); Frau Blackburn, geb. 5 Jan. 1872, wird gefilmt (Frau Blackburn, Born 5 Jan. 1872, Is Filmed) (1963); Porträet einer Bewäehrung (Portrait of One Who Proved His Mettle) (1964); Feuerlöscher E. A. Winterstein (Fireman E. A. Winterstein) (1968); Besitzbürgerin, Jahrgang 1908 (A Woman from the Property-owning Middle Class, Born 1908) (1972); Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin. Zur realistischen Methode, Frankfurt (1975); Die Menschen, die das Staufer-Austellung vorbereiten (Die Menschen, die das Stauferjahr vorbereiten (1977); and Brutalität in Stein (Die Ewigkeit von gestern; Brutality in Stone; Yesterday Goes on for Ever).
Films of the Vienna Actionists (1957-1995) UbuWeb presents 35 films by the Vienna Actionists. The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop "action art" (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.). Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As "actionists", they were active between 1960 and 1971. Most have continued their artistic work independently from the early 1970s onwards. Included here are films by Otto Mühl, Kurt Kren, Hermann Nitsch & Otmar Bauer. You can also listen to the soundworks & interviews by Otto Mühl & Hermann Nitsch in UbuWeb's sound section.
A Pause Many of you may have noticed that since the hack, we haven't been adding much new material. That's not due to a lack of new stuff -- we've got tons in the pipeline -- rather it's because, after the attack, we're up and moving to new and more secure servers. We should be settled within a few weeks and will begin posting fresh films & audio. Keep an eye here or on our Twitter feed for the latest. Until then, enjoy the vast trove that already exists here of approximately 7500 artists & several terabytes of media to cram your hard drives full with.
If We Had To Ask For Permission, We Wouldn't Exist: An Open Letter After the hacking of UbuWeb, a heated discussion broke out on the most prominent experimental film listserv, Frameworks, discussing the tactics of Ubu. There was clearly a lot of misunderstanding regarding what UbuWeb is about. Ubu's founder, Kenneth Goldsmith, was compelled has penned a response here, which can also be seen as an update to our FAQ.
John Berger - Ways of Seeing (1972) Ways of Seeing was a BBC television series consisting of visual essays that raise questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The serie gave rise to a later book of the same name written by John Berger. It would be easy to say that Ways of Seeing is hopelessly dated -- made in 1972, the films come across as a puritan-groovy mix of Monty Python, the Open University and the Look Around You spoofs. And yet what's so remarkable about this series is that it seems more apposite, subversive and thought-provoking than ever. The Britain we glimpse in the films, already alienated by spooky BBC Radiophonic Workshop music by Delia Derbyshire, is alienated even more by the passing of time. Alienated usefully, in the Brechtian sense; we look at a capitalist society which is like, and unlike, our own. In four parts: Episode 1: Psychological Aspects, Episode 2: Women in Art, Episode 3: Collectors and Collecting and Episode 4: Commercial Art. With an essay by Nick Curie (aka Momus).
The Poetics - Soundworks (1977-1993) Historical recordings of Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Tony Oursler and a cast of thousands from their Cal Arts days. Concurrent with the LAFMS and punk scenes in LA, this material is, in the words of artist Jutta Koether, "garbage versions of electronic music (linked to Kelley's involvement with DAM), noise, prototrance, instrumentals, both aggressive and sad stints with a singer-songwriter style, music as a dysfunctional standup routine (half lounge, half rock). In other words, punk rock deconstructed. The result is hours and hours of a monster being created and released." Featured here are the collections Remixes of Recordings (1977-1983) and The Poetics reunion album from 1997, Critical Inquiry In Green. This release marks the beginning of a new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who will begin to host the entire UbuWeb archive from this time on.
UbuWeb Podcast: The Sounds of Silence Craig Dworkin's paper Unheard Music [PDF] is a list of conceptual music that highlights a bunch of music that plays with the idea of silence: How is silent music made? Is silence really silent? How many varieties of silence are there? In this podcast, we actualize Dworkin's theories and discover that silence is anything but silent and neutral; rather, it's varietious and rich. Artists featured on this podcast include John Cage, Matmos, Steve Reich, Mieko Shiomi and many others. Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology (1984) Edited by Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas, an essential long out-of-print collection of essays centered around the historical conditions that led to the rise of performance art in the 1970s and 80s. The book is divided into three parts: 1. Historical Introduction, 2. Theory and Criticism, and 3. The Artists and includes essays by Roselee Goldberg, Ken Freidman, Michael Kirby, David Shapiro, David Bourdon, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Les Levine and Laurie Anderson and many others. This /ubu Edition was edited by Lucia della Paolera.
The Videos of Aki Sasamoto Aki Sasamoto is a New York-based, Japanese artist, who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever more medium that takes to get her ideas across. Her works have been shown both in performing art and visual art venues in New York and abroad. Besides her own works, she has collaborated with artists in visual arts, music, and dance, in which she plays multiple roles of dancer, sculptor, or director. Presented here are four videos: Everything Chidambaran (2005), remembering/modifying/developing (2007), Practicing to Leave - Conduct - Judge Mentals (2007), Secrets of My Mother's Child (2009) and Strange Attractors (2010).
Stewart Home - Short Films of the Eighties & Nineties
Ten rarely seen films by the British artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist, which combine pulp novel sensibilities with pornography, political agit-prop, and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art. These vintage shaky Super-8 and VHS works include promotions for Home's books, advertisements shown at independent cinemas, Situationist film remakes and much more. Also included are two recent works, Screams In Favour Of De Sade (2002) and The Eclipse & Re-Emergence of the Oedipus Complex (2004). UbuWeb also hosts an extensive Stewart Home audio archive [MP3].
Charles Bukowski Audio Archive (1968-86) A slew of orphaned and bootlegged recordings, inlcuding at-home performances, readings, radio shows & interviews. Included here are At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968), 70 Minutes in Hell (1969), King of Poets (1970), Poems and Insults (1973), Hostage (1980), Do You Use a Notebook? (1986) and Bukowski Lives! (undated). [MP3]
Bertolt Brecht's Audio Works A sweep of recordings and interpretations of Brecht's plays and speeches, both historical and contemporary. Includes Brecht singing two songs from "Die Dreigroschenoper" (rec. 1928/29), his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947), plays by the legendary Berliner Ensemble from the mid-50s, as well as archival radio plays of Brecht's work including "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," "Mr Puntila & His Man Matti," "In The Jungle of Cities," "The Life Of Galileo,"The Trial of Lucullus," "A Respectable Wedding," "Schweik in the Second World War," and "The Threepenny Opera." [MP3]
Reza Abdoh - Videos (1986-93) Reza Abdoh [1963-1995] was an Iranian-born director and playwright known for his large-scale, experimental theatrical productions that utilized multimedia elements and violent sexual imagery. Abdoh died of AIDS on May 11, 1995 in New York City at the age of 32. Included here are are eight videos: My Face (1986); Sleeping with the Devil (1990); The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice (1990); Bogeyman (1991); Daddy's Girl (1991); The Weeping Song (1991); The Law of Remains (1992); and Tight Right White (1993). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Bidoun Magazine.
Alfred Jarry Finally Appears on UbuWeb From our FAQ: Why is there no Alfred Jarry on UbuWeb? Answer: ;) It is our 'pataphysical joke. Sixteen years later, we've decided enough is enough. Hence, we've beefed up our Jarry audio archive [MP3s] with some archival Ubuesque cabaret chansons penned by Jarry and his pals, a French radio documentary on Jarry [Alfred Jarry: Introduction à la vie et l'ouvre du créateur d' Ubu Roi] and a lecture by Jarry scholar Michael Taylor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We've also posted the first of many film versions of Ubu Roi to come, this one directed by Jean-Christophe Averty in 1965, which is a rollicking mix of live acting and animation, all in glorious black and white. We do hope you'll forgive us.
Robert Hughes - Shock of the New (1982) A classic eight part documentary that offers a comprehensive view on the development of modernist art in its cultural context. It focusses minly on painting and sculpting but pays some attention to architecture as well. The documentary is presented and narrated by the art critic Robert Hughes, whose views on modernism have left an unmistakable stamp on the film. It was originally aired by the BBC.
Mike Kelley (1954-2012) Ubu mourns the loss of this great artist. You can find his audio archive here [MP3], his videos here, and an interivew with him here [PDF].
John Cage Centenary (2012) In preparation for the hundred-year anniversary of John Cage's birth, we've quietly been beefing up Cage's audio and films. In particular, we've just added a number of lectures, interviews, and Q&A's with Cage, recorded between 1969 and 1991. There are also several of papers written on John Cage in UbuWeb Papers, as well as a variety of works of his in UbuWeb's Historical section. In fact, there's so much John Cage on Ubu's site that we can't keep up with it.
Stanya Kahn "It's Cool, I'm Good" (2010) UbuWeb is pleased to present one of three films from Kahn's first body of solo video works, which continues Kahn's longstanding exploration of the blurred lines between fiction and document, performance and being, humor and distress, the scripted and the improvised. With a 22-track surround-sound audio score and over 20 locations featured, It's Cool, I'm Good creates a visceral cinematic space in which place and action, landscape and soundscape operate literally and metaphorically, signaling a tenuous relationship between experiences of trauma and moments of agency. Paralleling the ways in which jokes simultaneously compress and expand meaning, here living and and naming collapse into each other, in a narrative that unpacks more along psycho-emotional lines, creating many small arcs in place of one grand one. You can view the films of Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge here.
Ten Women Who Use Film A special project curated by Jennifer Higgie for UbuWeb featuring dozens of works by women filmmakers of varying ages and nationalities. Included are Juliette Blightman, Jennifer Bornstein, Bonnie Camplin, Spartacus Chetwynd, Beatrice Gibson, Aleksandra Mir, Frances Stark, Imogen Stidworthy, Annika Ström and Fiona Tan.
UbuWeb: Visual Poetry UbuWeb began in 1996 as a site for visual & concrete poetry and this new section expands upon and deepens Ubu's original vision. Beginning with Ian Hamilton Finlay's seminal magazine "Poor.Old.Tired.Horse" (1962-68) and continuing to the present (Anatol Knotek's 2010 "Rotated Alphabet"), the collection spans a half-century and encompasses hundreds of artists. This first installment, consisting of nearly 100 items will continue to be updated by curator & editor derek beaulieu.
Ryan Trecartin - Any Ever (2009-2010) Ryan Trecartin’s Any Ever comprises seven autonomous but interrelated videos. The work is structured as a diptych, with Trill-ogy Comp (three movies) as one side and Re’Search Wait’S (four movies) as the other. Taken together, these videos embark on poetic, formal, and structural elaborations of new forms of technology, language, narrative, identity, and humanity, portraying an extra-dimensional world that channels the existential dramas of our own. The individual videos fit together, block, break, orbit, or attract one another in infinite shifting combinations. Any Ever’s master narrative is subjectively chosen by the viewer, read from the shifting topography of its seven parts. Included is the Trill-ogy Comp, consisting of the three movies K-CoreaINC.K (section a); Sibling Topics (section a); and P.opular S.ky (section ish). Re’Search Wait’S comprises four movies: Ready, The Re’Search, Roamie View : History Enhancement, and Temp Stop.
Electronic Music Resources UbuWeb is pleased to announce the opening of a massive new section, devoted to technical resources concerning the practice of electronic and experimental sound. This is a place for information about actual methods and techniques, with little writing on aesthetics alone. It takes the form of technical/historical articles, interviews, books, small-press magazines and patents. Regrettably, most previous treatments of electronic music have tended to shy away from the details of the medium itself. In hopes of rendering the subject palatable they have removed much of its flavor, for it is precisely within the box, teeming with currents, where the true beauty resides - the other side of the panel. This first installment offers nearly 300 items, including books, periodicals, articles, interviews, media & patents.
The Films of Joseph Cornell (1936-1960) The films of the reclusive artist Joseph Cornell are as unique as his famous box constructions. Though rarely exhibited during his lifetime, these mysterious works nonetheless have had a deep and lasting influence on the world of avant-garde filmmaking . His entire body of film numbers some thirty-odd works, encompassing the incomplete and the fragmentary. It can be said that Cornell made two kinds of films in two distinct periods of activity: collage films, made by recombining found materials, and directed films,where he worked with cinematographers (including Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt and Larry Jordan) to document his fantasy/experience of wandering in New York. -Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta. Included here are 12 of Cornell's films.
History of Electronic / Electroacoustic Music [1937-2001] This massive selection is from a 62 CD set called "The History of Electroacoustic Music" that was floating around as a torrent, reputedly curated by a Brazilian student. It's sketchy. The torrent vanished and the collection has long been unavailable. It's a clearly flawed selection: there's few women and almost no one working outside of the Western tradition (where are the Japanese? Chinese? etc.). However, as an effort, it's admirable and contains a ton of great stuff. Take it with a grain of salt, or perhaps use it as a provocation to curate a more intelligent, inclusive, and comprehensive selection.
UbuWeb at 15 Years: An Overview Ubu's founder Kenneth Goldsmith writes: "It’s amazing to me that UbuWeb, after fifteen years, is still going. Run with no money and put together pretty much without permission, Ubu has succeeded by breaking all the rules, by going about things the wrong way. UbuWeb can be construed as the Robin Hood of the avant-garde, but instead of taking from one and giving to the other, we feel that in the end, we’re giving to all. UbuWeb is as much about the legal and social ramifications of its self-created distribution and archiving system as it is about the content hosted on the site. In a sense, the content takes care of itself; but keeping it up there has proved to be a trickier proposition." Read the entire piece at The Poetry Foundation.
The Films of Kamran Shirdel UbuWeb is pleased to present four of Shirdel's most renowned socio-political documentaries, films that courageously and frankly revealed the darker side of Iran's economic boom, analyzing the effects of a society of flush with oil money. These films were steeped in a deep social consciousness reminiscent of the best of the Italian Neo-realist tradition, the cinema that had influenced him deeply during his studies in Italy. Shirdel's furious documentaries and cinematic language were a bone of contention both under the Shah and following his exile, because they spoke up for the underprivileged and, in doing so, exposed and criticized the corruption of the mechanism of power. Because of the severe censorship, nearly all his films were banned and confiscated, and in the end he was expelled from The Ministry and put on the blacklist. Seven years after it was made (and censored), his The Epic of the Gorgani Village Boy (The Night It Rained!), after receiving the GRAN PRIX at The Third Tehran International Film Festival (1974), was immediately banned again and remained so (like his Nedamatgah (Women's Prison, 1965), Qaleh (Women's Quarter, 1966), Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966), and others) until after the revolution. Presented in collaboration with Bidoun: Art & Culture from the Middle East.
The Avant Garde Project Comes to UbuWeb UbuWeb is pleased to welcome the legendary Avant Garde Project. The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. The first installment is up, with new material as well as older, AGP archives to be added in the near future. [MP3 and FLAC]
Jean Cocteau - The Complete Recordings A set of historic recordings, compiled by Cocteau's sound producer Fred Kiriloff. Inlcudes Parade, Jean Cocteau's Theatre, Les Voleurs d'Enfants (The Abductors), La Toison d'Or (The Golden Fleece), La Machine Infernale (The Infernal Mechanism), La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), Presentation of the Group of Six, Le Bel Indifférent (The Callous Beau), Les Parents Terribles, Reception Speech at the Académie Française. Plus previously unissued items, such as: L'Arbre de No‘l (The Christmas Tree), Crucifixion, Nuit de No‘l (Christmas Night) and the Preface to Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower Wedding) and many others. Cocteau's collaborators included Francis Poulenc, Eric Satie, Marianne Oswald, Suzy Solidor, Edith Piaf, Jean Marais, Jeanne Moreau, Diaghilev, Picasso and more. [MP3]
The Films of Peggy Ahwesh (1985-2009) Over the last twenty years, Peggy Ahwesh has produced one of the most heterogeneous bodies of work in the field of experimental film and video. A true bricoleur, her tools include narrative and documentary styles, improvised performance and scripted dialogue, synch-sound film, found footage, digital animation, and crude Pixelvision video. Using this range of approaches, she has extended the project initiated by 1960s and '70s American avant-garde film, and has augmented that tradition with an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject. Presented here are: From Romance to Ritual (1985), The Deadman (1989), Martina's Playhouse (1989), Nocturne (1998), She Puppet (2001), The Third Body (2007), Beirut Outtakes (2007), Bethlehem (2009). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).
UbuWeb sur Radio France Culture Kenneth Goldsmith, fondateur d'UbuWeb, explique à Thomas Baumgartner la genèse et l'esprit d'UbuWeb, dans Les Passagers de la Nuit sur France Culture, famous French radio, le 25 mars 2011. Avec aussi les voix de Warhol, Beuys, Dali, Joyce, Kurt Schwitters... Téléchargeable ici [30 min/ French]
Vanguarda da pilhagem: roubo e arte no UbuWeb &
Kenneth Goldsmith, do UbuWeb: 'O site é muito ruim'
O Golbo, Brazil, 26.03.2011
IRIS-TIME UNLIMITED (1962-1970) An occasional ephemeral two-page newspaper produced by the legendary experimental Iris Clert Gallery in Paris, featuring many of the cutting-edge artists of the day including Ad Reinhardt, Pol Bury, Lucio Fontana, CPLY and many others. Clert ran an almost anarchistic free space in Saint Germain des Prés, which featured early conceptual shows (Yves Klein's empty gallery and Arman's rubbish-strewn space) as well as being an early venue for performance art. Curated for UbuWeb by Ulysse Geissler.
Harry Bertoia - The Sonambient Discography [MP3] In the early 1970's Harry Bertoia made hundreds of sound sculptures. These sculptures represent Harry Bertoia's formation of Sonambient. Sonambient was Bertoia's term to describe the spatial and tonal environment created by these sound sculptures. By stretching, bending, striking, and in other ways moving the materials, he made them respond to wind and/or to touch to create different sounds or tones, which he then taught himself to 'play' and recorded a series of pieces. He also performed with the pieces in a number of concerts. The completed Sonambient also consists of gongs and suspended sonic-bars. Within his renovated barn, Harry made more than 360 magnetic-tape recordings.
We Killed Our RSS Feed Sorry about that. But you can always catch the latest on our Twitter feed. Or check this page. We're always updating. Thx.
Ubu Moves To New Servers We're proud to announce our new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who is now hosting Ubu's media files. We're in the process of switching everything over to the new servers. While you'll (finally) begin to see new media content, there will be some bumps and many inevitable 404s. Bear with us: it might take a while to get it all figured out. If you find something that's not working, please let us know and we'll fix it.
James Hoff - Topten (2008) In almost every issue since December 1997, the contemporary art monthly Artforum has asked a member of the art world to compile a list of his or her top ten favorite recent exhibitions (as well as concerts, television programs, books, and events) in a list that displays the writer's taste as well as his or her wit. With this hefty artist's book, James Hoff has reprinted the text of every column alongside the abstract designs of blacked-out photographs that once depicted the writers' picks. Inlcudes Kate Bush, David Byrne, Dave Eggers, Dave Hickey, Charlie Kaufman, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Matmos, Glenn O'Brien, Amy Sillman, Laurie Simmons, John Waters and dozens more. Also related, is the archive of UbuWeb's monthly Top Ten picks.
Listening to Films, a New UbuWeb Podcast A selection of ten films from the UbuWeb archive that are actually worth listening to (as well as seeing). Included here are excerpts from the following films: Vito Acconci's Theme Song (1973); René Clair's Entr'acte (1924) with a soundtrack by Erik Satie; Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn's Can't Swallow It, Can't Spit It Out (2006); Jordan Wolfson's Con Leche (2009); People Like Us's Story Without End (2005); Hermann Nitsch's 6 Tage Spiel - Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Day 3: Day of Dionysus (1998); Sun Ra A Joyful Noise (1980); Richard Serra's Boomerang (1974); David Van Tieghem's Ear to the Ground (1979); Karl Holmqvist's I'm With You In Rockland (2005). Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
"No money, no democracy - that's why UbuWeb is so good" An interview with UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith at Radio Web MACBA. Poet, university professor and amateur archivist, Kenneth Goldsmith is the founder and main editor of Ubuweb, the Internet's largest archive of artistic avant-garde material. An underground project that has no institutional backing or budget of any kind, Ubuweb is an influential repository that is as exhaustive as it is personal, reflecting the preferences, quirks and obsessions of its creator. Son[i]a talks to Kenneth Goldsmith about the origins, ideas and operation of Ubuweb.
Eight Flims by Alexander Kluge (1960-1977) Writer, theorist, filmmaker, and television pioneer, Alexander Kluge is one of the intellectual giants of post-war Germany. Although he directed nearly thirty films, Kluge's uncompromising politics and formal experimentation ensured that most of these critically celebrated works never reached a mass audience. Despite this groundbreaking work, it is his career as a fiction writer that has contributed most to his European renown. Kluge has treated media as a fluid field, one in which disciplinary boundaries are as questionable as the distinctions between high and low, individual and society, history and the present: all are texts up for renegotiation. Films inlcuded here are: Lehrer im Wandel (Teachers in Transformation) (1963); Frau Blackburn, geb. 5 Jan. 1872, wird gefilmt (Frau Blackburn, Born 5 Jan. 1872, Is Filmed) (1963); Porträet einer Bewäehrung (Portrait of One Who Proved His Mettle) (1964); Feuerlöscher E. A. Winterstein (Fireman E. A. Winterstein) (1968); Besitzbürgerin, Jahrgang 1908 (A Woman from the Property-owning Middle Class, Born 1908) (1972); Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin. Zur realistischen Methode, Frankfurt (1975); Die Menschen, die das Staufer-Austellung vorbereiten (Die Menschen, die das Stauferjahr vorbereiten (1977); and Brutalität in Stein (Die Ewigkeit von gestern; Brutality in Stone; Yesterday Goes on for Ever).
Films of the Vienna Actionists (1957-1995) UbuWeb presents 35 films by the Vienna Actionists. The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop "action art" (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.). Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As "actionists", they were active between 1960 and 1971. Most have continued their artistic work independently from the early 1970s onwards. Included here are films by Otto Mühl, Kurt Kren, Hermann Nitsch & Otmar Bauer. You can also listen to the soundworks & interviews by Otto Mühl & Hermann Nitsch in UbuWeb's sound section.
A Pause Many of you may have noticed that since the hack, we haven't been adding much new material. That's not due to a lack of new stuff -- we've got tons in the pipeline -- rather it's because, after the attack, we're up and moving to new and more secure servers. We should be settled within a few weeks and will begin posting fresh films & audio. Keep an eye here or on our Twitter feed for the latest. Until then, enjoy the vast trove that already exists here of approximately 7500 artists & several terabytes of media to cram your hard drives full with.
If We Had To Ask For Permission, We Wouldn't Exist: An Open Letter After the hacking of UbuWeb, a heated discussion broke out on the most prominent experimental film listserv, Frameworks, discussing the tactics of Ubu. There was clearly a lot of misunderstanding regarding what UbuWeb is about. Ubu's founder, Kenneth Goldsmith, was compelled has penned a response here, which can also be seen as an update to our FAQ.
John Berger - Ways of Seeing (1972) Ways of Seeing was a BBC television series consisting of visual essays that raise questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The serie gave rise to a later book of the same name written by John Berger. It would be easy to say that Ways of Seeing is hopelessly dated -- made in 1972, the films come across as a puritan-groovy mix of Monty Python, the Open University and the Look Around You spoofs. And yet what's so remarkable about this series is that it seems more apposite, subversive and thought-provoking than ever. The Britain we glimpse in the films, already alienated by spooky BBC Radiophonic Workshop music by Delia Derbyshire, is alienated even more by the passing of time. Alienated usefully, in the Brechtian sense; we look at a capitalist society which is like, and unlike, our own. In four parts: Episode 1: Psychological Aspects, Episode 2: Women in Art, Episode 3: Collectors and Collecting and Episode 4: Commercial Art. With an essay by Nick Curie (aka Momus).
The Poetics - Soundworks (1977-1993) Historical recordings of Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Tony Oursler and a cast of thousands from their Cal Arts days. Concurrent with the LAFMS and punk scenes in LA, this material is, in the words of artist Jutta Koether, "garbage versions of electronic music (linked to Kelley's involvement with DAM), noise, prototrance, instrumentals, both aggressive and sad stints with a singer-songwriter style, music as a dysfunctional standup routine (half lounge, half rock). In other words, punk rock deconstructed. The result is hours and hours of a monster being created and released." Featured here are the collections Remixes of Recordings (1977-1983) and The Poetics reunion album from 1997, Critical Inquiry In Green. This release marks the beginning of a new partnership with CENTRO in Mexico City, who will begin to host the entire UbuWeb archive from this time on.
UbuWeb Podcast: The Sounds of Silence Craig Dworkin's paper Unheard Music [PDF] is a list of conceptual music that highlights a bunch of music that plays with the idea of silence: How is silent music made? Is silence really silent? How many varieties of silence are there? In this podcast, we actualize Dworkin's theories and discover that silence is anything but silent and neutral; rather, it's varietious and rich. Artists featured on this podcast include John Cage, Matmos, Steve Reich, Mieko Shiomi and many others. Download the MP3 podcast directly here. You can subscribe to our podcast here. UbuWeb's podcasts are produced by The Poetry Foundation.
The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology (1984) Edited by Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas, an essential long out-of-print collection of essays centered around the historical conditions that led to the rise of performance art in the 1970s and 80s. The book is divided into three parts: 1. Historical Introduction, 2. Theory and Criticism, and 3. The Artists and includes essays by Roselee Goldberg, Ken Freidman, Michael Kirby, David Shapiro, David Bourdon, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Les Levine and Laurie Anderson and many others. This /ubu Edition was edited by Lucia della Paolera.
The Videos of Aki Sasamoto Aki Sasamoto is a New York-based, Japanese artist, who works in performance, sculpture, dance, and whatever more medium that takes to get her ideas across. Her works have been shown both in performing art and visual art venues in New York and abroad. Besides her own works, she has collaborated with artists in visual arts, music, and dance, in which she plays multiple roles of dancer, sculptor, or director. Presented here are four videos: Everything Chidambaran (2005), remembering/modifying/developing (2007), Practicing to Leave - Conduct - Judge Mentals (2007), Secrets of My Mother's Child (2009) and Strange Attractors (2010).
domingo, mayo 20, 2012
jueves, mayo 03, 2012
MEMORIAS INDECENTES, PRESENTACION DE OTRO SILENCIO (Diario de un editor)
Diario de un editor
Habló su sobrino de la manera brillante y exigente con la que se desenvuelven los buenos docentes y nos dejó un regusto amargo por el tiempo, y dulce por el recuerdo. Dijo cosas hermosas de su familia y duras contra el dictador. Estuvo realmente brillante y nada pretencioso. El encuentro se prolongó después por espacio de un par de horas. Creo yo que ni en los mejores sueños pensó el autor en un grupo de gente tan entregada a recordar su memoria tomando una copa de vino.
El caso es que al final de su intervención Insausti, sobrino, dijo algo que me persiguió un buen rato:
Corremos el peligro de que aquellos tiempos vuelvan, dijo.
Yo no lo creo, pero la afirmación me causó enfecto y el problema es que no lograba saber porqué. Vino en mi auxilio Manuel Espina , el psiquitra prologó el libro de animales, diciéndome que saliéramos un rato para echar un pito:
Lo peligroso ahora no es volver sino seguir hacia adelante.
Era eso. La cuestión está en volver hacia atrás y ver dónde nos equivocamos. Parar y no seguir por los caminos del dinero, los mercados, el producto financiero, el mundo sin esfuerzo, las fábricas sin hombres, el mundo sin destino. Hay que volver hacia atrás y retomar el hilo de nuestro propio lenguaje que hemos perdido no hace mucho. Después del dictador, desde luego , pero no hace tanto.
Volver hasta encontrarnos ... Tony Judt. "Algo va mal ", " Postguerra ". Alguno de ustedes habrán leído esos libros. Sino lo han hecho, dejen todo, asalten una librería si es preciso y dejénse llevar por una de las hipótesis mas sugestivas para salir de este desatino.
Mañana, uno de mayo. En un tiempo se salía alcampo a merendar tortilla, pimentos verdes y filetes ampanados. ¿ Les suena a algo ?
adelante
Vamos por partes. El viernes tuve una delicada y agradble presentación de un libro de la casa . " Memorias Indecentes". El autor , un hombre de 92 años, acababa de dejar una manda testamentaria a sus sobrinos, gente elgante de trato y espiritu, rogándoles la publicación del manuscrito a su muerte. Se trata de algunos recuerdos ordenados y pulcros de su vida homosexual en los destinos que como ingeniero de canales y puertos le había deparado la vida laboral. Años cuarenta. Y no digo más, que solía argumentar Don Quijote.Habló su sobrino de la manera brillante y exigente con la que se desenvuelven los buenos docentes y nos dejó un regusto amargo por el tiempo, y dulce por el recuerdo. Dijo cosas hermosas de su familia y duras contra el dictador. Estuvo realmente brillante y nada pretencioso. El encuentro se prolongó después por espacio de un par de horas. Creo yo que ni en los mejores sueños pensó el autor en un grupo de gente tan entregada a recordar su memoria tomando una copa de vino.
El caso es que al final de su intervención Insausti, sobrino, dijo algo que me persiguió un buen rato:
Corremos el peligro de que aquellos tiempos vuelvan, dijo.
Yo no lo creo, pero la afirmación me causó enfecto y el problema es que no lograba saber porqué. Vino en mi auxilio Manuel Espina , el psiquitra prologó el libro de animales, diciéndome que saliéramos un rato para echar un pito:
Lo peligroso ahora no es volver sino seguir hacia adelante.
Era eso. La cuestión está en volver hacia atrás y ver dónde nos equivocamos. Parar y no seguir por los caminos del dinero, los mercados, el producto financiero, el mundo sin esfuerzo, las fábricas sin hombres, el mundo sin destino. Hay que volver hacia atrás y retomar el hilo de nuestro propio lenguaje que hemos perdido no hace mucho. Después del dictador, desde luego , pero no hace tanto.
Volver hasta encontrarnos ... Tony Judt. "Algo va mal ", " Postguerra ". Alguno de ustedes habrán leído esos libros. Sino lo han hecho, dejen todo, asalten una librería si es preciso y dejénse llevar por una de las hipótesis mas sugestivas para salir de este desatino.
Mañana, uno de mayo. En un tiempo se salía alcampo a merendar tortilla, pimentos verdes y filetes ampanados. ¿ Les suena a algo ?
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